“Common seeeense?……where arrre yooooouu???? Are you under here? Nope. Over there? Nope.” If you’re looking for common sense there are many places you could look, but you certainly won’t find it in one particular Chicago school. A teacher received what amounts to no more than a slap on the wrist for violating her fiduciary duty to her student, while a mother sets up the perfect scenario for a teacher with less than stellar character, to lampoon her own daughter. Oh, and you guessed it: put these two together and you have yourself the perfect recipe for a lawsuit.

Ukailya Lofton, age 7, went to school on picture day with her hair in braids and what else attached to the ends? Wait for it…you guessed it, Jolly Ranchers.

Ukailya’s teacher who apparently just loves to have a good laugh at her students’ expense, took a picture of the unique hairdo, then went home and posted the photo on Facebook. (Apparently she also likes her friends to have a good laugh at her students’ expense.) The picture has since been removed, and the teacher’s Facebook page, shut down.

The mother of little Ukailya, Lucinda Williams, is now filing a lawsuit. “She never apologized to my daughter. She is still in the school. She wasn’t suspended. I mean, it’s like nothing happened. She just apologized and that’s it. That’s not enough,” said her mother.

Now, I’m not saying that the teacher shouldn’t be reprimanded but a lawsuit? The teacher clearly exercised poor judgment (understatement) but couldn’t the same argument be made for the mother?

As someone who has seen bullying firsthand, it is your responsibility as a parent to set your child up for success each and every day. Kids are cruel. And that cruelty can sometimes be unavoidable despite the best efforts of parents. But if your child wants to wear their hair in a way that could set them up for criticism, they better either have some pretty thick skin or a mother who says, “No, honey. You can wear the candy in your hair on the weekend.”

Both of these adults let this child down. The teacher should’ve had the child’s best interest at heart and what she did was despicable. The mother also lacked the common sense needed to know that this wasn’t a good idea from the get-go. She became even more shameful when she came out saying she was going to file a lawsuit.

Sometimes the blame isn’t on just one person. In this case, it’s on both and the solution isn’t a lawsuit. It rarely is. The lack of common sense cancels itself out. The child is the one who was hurt the most, which unfortunately, is usually the case.

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